Toyota India have their work cut out

So Toyota seems to be finally showing some urgency in moving forward in the Indian market but Toyota must realise they have their work cut out in the Indian market due to being the latecomer here.

While Honda brought in almost their entire lineup[asian markets],toyota gave us just a couple.Honda was able to completely dominate the battle between the two[Civic Vs the Corolla],yes the civic was a good car but Honda brand also had a big hand in giving the civic that edge and not that the corolla was so bad.Tomorrow if Toyota roll out the vios sedan very unlikely people would ignore the Honda city and jump towards toyota unless of course toyota bring in a diesel.But then with Maruti expected to roll out a multijet diesel for the sx4 apart from the existing players Toyota needs to have something really special to attract customers.

Its the same story in the small car segment as well,Incase of the petrol options I believe Honda would again set the charts on fire while toyota would have to depend on diesel's but again competition would be fierce here too with even skoda entering the battle.

Toyota have kind of alienated themselves from the Indian market in these 10 years whereas honda seems to have got much closer.Coincidentaly both are celebrating their 10 birthday in India at around the same time.Also they will have another japanese giant to contend with when they do get in the indian market with their complete lineup namely Nissan who have big plans as well.

Toyota may have done lot of groundwork in this 10 years but are they really in a better position than Nissan[who are just beginning].Shouldn't they have taken the path Honda took,created more visibilty for the brand.Could toyota not have started of in India in a bigger way and ensured that their plant had more capacity than just producing two models.Even today honda is focussed on brand building as can be seen in their ads sadly toyota seems like a confused company.Hopefully they do take notice.

Toyota needs to think out of the box in terms of their next vehicles for India and also consider about diesel engines in a big way.For the moment the Toyota brand is losing its charm in India.